


i couldn't get the boy to kill me

by spellingmynamewrong



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-First War with Voldemort, the leather jacket of despair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26151439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spellingmynamewrong/pseuds/spellingmynamewrong
Summary: He still has the leather jacket. That fucking leather jacket Sirius bought because Sid Vicious wore one, and Sirius threw himself head-first into punk rock, rebellion on his lips and dark hair flying free.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 24
Kudos: 52





	i couldn't get the boy to kill me

**Author's Note:**

> the title is taken from "little beast" by richard siken, which is one of those poems i can't read without thinking of wolfstar.

On the darkest nights, he thinks that Sirius let him live not as a mercy, but as another betrayal.

James—dead.

Lily—dead.

Peter—dead.

And Remus is in his tiny flat still, in the middle of London, the flat he once shared with Sirius and can’t bother to let go of, both because he doesn’t know where else he’ll get a better deal on rent and because he doesn’t _want_ to let go.

He thinks—I am the only one left. And Sirius always knew how Remus couldn’t bear to be alone.

Funny, that. Remus is afraid of small spaces and the full moon and being alone, and Sirius has made it so that he will always be alone, now. That was one thing they had in common, that no one could ever see—they both feared that. Sirius feared being alone even as he cast himself out of his family and set about breaking every rule because he had, despite everything, wanted to belong somewhere, only he wanted to choose that somewhere, and Remus feared being alone because that was all anyone had ever told him he would be.

And now they’re both trapped in their worst fears, he supposes—Sirius in Azkaban, and Remus just one block from UCL, cars and buses driving past in the night and people everywhere, but still so alone. 

He still has the leather jacket. That fucking leather jacket Sirius bought because Sid Vicious wore one, and Sirius threw himself head-first into punk rock, rebellion on his lips and dark hair flying free. 

It’s growing worn, now. Remus wears it nearly daily, throughout rainy days and breezy nights, doesn’t wash it unless he has to because the laundromat is a luxury and Cleaning Charms cost no money at all but always take the jacket’s luster away. Sirius had stuck pins into the collar, shining bits of plastic with slogans he probably barely understood. Remus’s favorite pin had always been the tiny dog, its mouth lolled open in a greeting. 

He’s terrible for keeping it. Some of Sirius’s things had been taken by the Ministry, for inspection, as if they expected to find evidence of the betrayal in a book of crossword puzzles. Some Remus had given to charity, all the baggy t-shirts and tight jeans. But the jacket he’d kept, because to give up the jacket would be to erase Sirius altogether, somehow. Because no matter how much he hates Sirius now, how certain he is that he wouldn’t hesitate to kill him if he ever lays eyes on him again, he misses Sirius—the boy who told him firmly that he didn’t care if Remus was a werewolf, who kissed him furtively and shyly on the field behind Potter Manor the summer before sixth year, who lived with him and slept with him and loved him.

Or at least Remus had loved him, and he thought that Sirius loved him back.

Yet he wants still—wants so very badly for everything to be a mistake, even though he knows that mistakes like this don’t happen, you don’t just betray your best friends to a fascist and genocidal would-be dictator accidentally. He wants Sirius to come back. He wants to kiss him and brush the tangles out of his hair and somehow make a life with him. 

Sometimes, he wakes in the middle of the night to a noise and wonders, briefly, hysterically, if it could be Sirius. Sirius, come to kiss or kill him—both small mercies. Then, he turns the lights on, and his bedroom is empty, but for the leather jacket draped over a chair in the corner. And Remus, as always, is alone. 

**Author's Note:**

> a drabble before i hunker down and finally finish the next chapter of sirius and harry go to white castle (it's coming, i swear!), because i had a lot of siken-fueled thoughts.
> 
> kudos and comments fuel me! <3


End file.
